


the black dread

by Magali_Dragon



Series: one shots and other drabbles [10]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Daenerys Targaryen, Dark Jon Snow, Dark Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, F/M, Feelings Realization, Fugue, Jon Snow Knows Something, if daenerys is mad then so is jon because you can't have it both ways, jon did ahve two other siblings remember d/d oh way you didn't read the books, remember rhaegar had other kids? because I do, season eight happened but I fixed the ending because I can and I think this is better (I think)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magali_Dragon/pseuds/Magali_Dragon
Summary: As he leaves Tyrion to find Daenerys, Jon comes across a Red Keep inhabitant that causes him to realize some things.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: one shots and other drabbles [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567705
Comments: 93
Kudos: 484





	the black dread

**Author's Note:**

> I know it has been almost a year but I go through stages of grief and was in a bit of rage state. I was also reading the books again and was like "Oh yeah, Jon has two other siblings, REMEMBER THEM??" because they were conveniently forgotten in the show. 
> 
> Plus I thought it would be interesting if it was an innocuous thing that reminded Jon of his true Targaryen side. As silly as this might be. 
> 
> And I don't write Dark!Jonerys because I'm afraid I can't do them justice. Consider this me dipping my toe into that pond as I contemplate all out diving in with a future fic.

“You know what you have to do.”

_Why does it have to be me? Why does it always have to be me?_

_Kill the boy Jon Snow._

_Love is the death of duty._

_I can her clearer than anything._

_You know nothing, Jon Snow._

_I wish you had never told me._

_Let it be fear._

_When I see you again, we’ll talk about your mother._

_You’re the heir to the Iron Throne._

He almost stumbled in the ash, from the weight of the memories on his shoulders, the weight of the conversation he’d just had with the doomed Lannister. He could hardly breathe, it smothered him, burned out his lungs, settled in his throat, so when he coughed out puffed smoke.

_I am a dragon._

_You think our house words are stamped on us the moment we are born?_

_Fire and blood._

He stopped before a series of broken steps, the stone burned and melted from the heat of a dragon’s ire. He lifted his face to the cold air, unable to determine whether it was snow or ash that fell on his face. He was cold; his face felt as though it had been exposed to the frigid air for days, as if he were beyond the Wall again, and yet…and yet he was warm. He was hot, sweat dripping from the base of his neck down his spine. His palms were damp, he could not hold a blade in his hand if he tried at that moment.

They thought her grief was madness, they thought it was simply a twist of a coin. If that were the case, he thought, then perhaps one day he would be there too. Would they say the same for him? If he endured too much, if he broke beneath the weight of the world, if he made mistakes and he wielded his sword on the people they thought were the wrong ones, would they do the same to him? Scurry and whisper in the darkness, spiders and little birds, and all the rest…they would. He knew they would.

His sister betrayed the Old Gods, she brought shame upon the House she claimed she was supporting. They hated her, he could see it in his other sister’s eyes, the way she looked upon their queen with disdain. _Where did the little girl who wanted to ride a dragon go?_ Lost somewhere in the crowds of Kings Landing, as their father’s head dropped down the steps of the Sept of Baelor, he imagined. As that was where the fanciful young girl with dreams of becoming a princess had gone.

Except she still had those dreams, he saw them now, she could not share the title of Queen with another. A more beautiful queen, he thought idly, still staring down the stairs. He knew what lay at the base of them. If he descended, he would cross a stretch of what had once been a wide corridor, now open to the skies. Rubble and melted iron and half-burnt lions scattered through the area.

He closed his eyes. They rested this on his shoulders. The determination. They could not do it, so it fell to him. To the woman he loved, to the woman he betrayed, and the woman who he pledged his sword, his love, his life…his crown. _Such as it was._

He took a step.

Then another.

As he made to make another step, to come to the corridor, still unsure as to what he planned to do, he stopped hard, staring at the creature that was sitting in his path. Staring at him. With one yellow eye, unblinking.

It was a cat.

A black tom, its fur scraggly, almost smoking as if it had wandered right from the fires that littered the Keep and the city. It had a half-bent ear, another missing. One eye was gone, the socket sealed shut, and when it drew back to hiss, he could see that it still maintained its fangs, spitting fire as if it were a dragon.

He cocked his head at the creature. _How did it survive all of this?_

As though he’d been wandering in a dream, he knelt to the ash, his hand outstretched. He hated cats, he thought perhaps sometimes it was the wolf in him, wanting to chase them away. He remembered Arya always running after the barn cats in the yard, Father yelling at her to knock it off, lest she get scratched. A stable boy had gotten scratched, got a fever, and died. The cat that did it had survived. He thought anything that had the power to do that deserved to be left alone to its own devices.

_Father._

_Uncle._

A rage bubbled in his throat. He could barely focus on the cat sitting in front of him, still hissing, the one yellow eye flashing. Did no one realize what he was going through when they tried to use him for their own devices? Did Sansa not think that when she went running to Tyrion to spill the secret he’d sworn her to uphold? When Sam told him in the crypts, before the stone effigy of his father, of his…his _mother_ … _no._

_I am but a pawn in their games._

He always had been. The one decision he had chosen on his own, for him and no one else, not the Watch, not the realm, not his family, and not the North…it was going to that door. Getting up from his bed in his chambers, taking something for his own, damn the consequences. Since when had he, the _Bastard of Winterfell_ , ever done a fucking thing for himself? _Never._

Ned made sure of that when he scurried him away from that tower in Dorne. Ned made sure of it when he took on the stain on his honor, claiming a bastard rather than sending him to Essos, rather than disappearing him into the family of a farmer, crofter, or tradesmen. He had grown up with siblings, but with little love. He had grown up thinking that anything he desired was _wrong._

So going to her door, taking her into his arms, and loving her…it was all for him and he did not fucking care. He did it for himself. Because he wanted to feel her hands on him, he wanted to kiss her, and he wanted to taste her. To see if that snappish little mouth could do things other than demand he bend the knee. Oh he bent the knee alright, and he did not hear her complaining at all.

_His aunt._

Ned would be ashamed of him, but he was a _Targaryen._ Wasn’t that what they did? He wrestled with it, lying there after she left his room, tossing and turning, unable to sleep, filled with need for her. He wanted her still, fuck the thoughts of the North, fuck everyone. He would kill them for saying anything against it. Until he woke up and realized he did not have those luxuries.

The tom stared at him still. “What?” he whispered, croaking the word. He cocked his head. The cat hissed again. The tom’s nose almost looked burned off. It had survived quite a lot, he imagined. Each scar on its back and missing patch of fur a testament. He frowned, his thoughts wandering from the North. Wandering to stories Arya told him, one of those first nights back in the warm keep, like they were children again and not the shells of them that remained after all they’d witnessed and experienced.

_”I saw the skulls of the dragons in the dungeons…the ones outside…I never thought I would see real dragons. They are almost the same size.”_ That was as close as she would ever get to admitting she admired the Dragon Queen. Admired that she was a true Targaryen with dragons, who would burn down all the dead and save them all.

He wondered if it was just Northern pride that was the cause of this suffering. Was that all it was? Just their stupid pride and inability to admit they needed help, inability to realize it was someone else who came to save their sorry hardened arses? The North survived on its own for thousands of years, it always had persevered, and now they needed help from someone else. Not just anyone, but a _Targaryen._

_”I bet you ran right down there the moment you got there to see the skulls.”_

_”No, I was chasing cats. I even chased down Rhaenys Targaryen’s black cat Balerion. He ran right through the skull of his namesake.”_

A ripple of heat passed through him at the memory. It was a throwaway comment from his sister, as she spoke of the skulls, and then changed the subject to something else. To war, death, and what they were going to do next, now that the armies and the dragons and the dead were upon them.

He blinked, gray eyes focused on the yellow of the cat. “Balerion?” he whispered. The name of the Black Dread. Of Aegon’s mount. Drogon was him reborn, they said. Not that anyone alive had seen Balerion in the flesh. The dragon had lived long enough to have at least three riders. He had watched them die, as Targaryens were wont to do, so few of them dying naturally, often by blood and fiery means. _As was our words._

_Our words._

The cat stepped to him, meowed. Another hiss. He flicked his fingers out, unsure why he could not move from his spot. He felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. Remembering the stories. Of Gregor Clegane and what he’d done to the children…to…to his _siblings._

He was so consumed in his thoughts of his… _cousins_ that he had not thought of his brother and sister. Rhaegar’s other children. They might have all lived together, had things turned out differently. Rhaenys and Aegon.

_T_ _he other Aegon._

Rhaenys had a black kitten. The kitten survived, while she didn’t, stabbed to death by the Lannisters as her mother and baby brother suffered similar fates. Wrapped up in shrouds of red and gold, laid before the Iron Throne and Robert Baratheon’s feet. Robert Baratheon, who pardoned the men who did it, who brought them into his service, and cared little for the tiny souls who were dead, all because they were dragons.

“Ned saved me from that.” He stared at the cat. He cocked his head. “Maybe I am mad.” Speaking to a cat. The cat of his long dead sister. He wondered what she looked like. He wondered if they would have been close. Not too far apart in age, but he had never had an _older_ sibling. He and Robb were essentially the same age.

He stood, eyes still on the cat. “They murdered her. Stabbed her. All because she was a Targaryen.” They were at war, but what kind of a war was it? A false war, because his father ran off with his mother, and another man was jealous. Because the Mad King was mad, because he burned and murdered the Lord of Winterfell and his heir. There were plenty of reasons, but were any of htem just?

_And how is it my place to decide?_

They killed his siblings. The Lannisters. They looked away and said it was just the cost of doing business. Disregard for lives lost and the pain that remained as a result.

Tyrion was a Lannister.

Varys tried to poison her. All because he thought that another was better for the throne.

Tyrion wanted him to kill her. All because he thought she had gone mad. Because there was someone better.

_We could rule together._

The cat meowed at him again, moving to start slinking around his feet. He stood, lifting his face from the former pet of his dead half-sister. A half-sister he had never considered, as he wallowed in his thoughts, in his disgust at his love for his aunt, and his duty to the ones he considered his siblings. _My other sisters._

One who wanted to be queen, who refused to acknowledge that her kingdom only stood today because of the sacrifices of the woman she despised for no good reason. Who broke a vow and ran off to tell… _a Lannister._ One who held more secrets than he thought capable, who was not the little girl he’d left, but who was not even a woman either. Who was _no one._ Claiming she knew killers, as though she herself had not murdered people who harmed her family.

They did not even think of what he might be going through, putting all this on him. On the lost family he might have had. The father who might have loved him, who would give him his name and titles. The mother who died birthing him, but if she survived who might have loved him too, sat by his beside when he was ill and gave him sweets and praised him when he did well in lessons or swordfighting.

_They took it all away from me._

My family. My life. My entire existence. _They stole it from me._

They stole it from _her._

Balerion slinked through his ankles again. He closed his eyes around hot, angry tears, his fists clenching at his sides. He heaved his breath, fighting the anger, as he always had his entire life. He could never get angry, because that was what Lady Catleyn wanted. She wanted him to show that he was a true bastard. A lustful, angry, sinful creature. The temper he’d had, he could never show it, and the few times it came out…he was always gazed upon as something to be pitied.

_You are a dragon. Be a dragon._

If Tyrion thought that house words were stamped on their bodies at birth, then he would be fire and blood. He had never been a Stark. He closed his eyes against the fire building inside of him, allowing it to course through him, heating him beneath the armor stamped with the wolves of a house to which he had never truly belonged. He reached up to the buckle of his gorget and tugged on it, letting the iron fall to the floor with a dull clatter in the ash.

The cat hissed again. He stared at it. “You’ve survived this long,” he murmured. He cocked his head. “Longer than your owner did.” He wished he had known her. He suddenly felt sad. He wanted to find more about her. To go to Dorne, to learn about his lost siblings. If there was anyone left alive that might have known them.

So many people dead.

All for that _fucking_ throne.

He stepped away from the tom, who followed after him, and he stopped at the stairs leading to the throne room, as a mountain of ash-covered rubble moved, wings lifting up and yellow eyes peering at him, smoke curling through nostrils and heating him as her son surveyed him.

_Does he know?_

He stared at Drogon, waiting for the dragon to allow him passage. The beast rumbled, before moving aside, wings beating hard, swirling up snow and ash and dust in a tornado around him, blinding him briefly as he took to the skies of his new domain. To the new world.

Balerion moved to the space the dragon vacated, hissing again, and with the blink of his one yellow eye, disappeared between two stones, an angry black shadow, gone off somewhere. Perhaps to die, perhaps to escape, who knew. He smiled to himself, feeling calm, and rather sure of himself as he ascended the stairs to the throne room.

As she spoke of the Iron Throne, he thought of what the lion had wanted him to do. He questioned her decisions; he was not pleased that she had murdered innocents, but he also could not bring himself to truly care as she spoke about how they used the innocent against them. It was true, they had used the innocents. He had seen innocents die. They were sacrifices to be made sometimes, he thought. She approached him, folded into his arms, and spoke of building a new world together.

“You are my queen, now and always.”

And he kissed her.

And it all felt right.

They broke a moment later, her tiny gasp bringing him back to the present. Her hands spread over his exposed neck and the ties of his gambeson, murmuring. “Where is your armor?” she whispered.

“Gone.”

She nodded, her hands sliding up his neck and cupping his face, violet eyes serene. There was no fear in her face, no worry and no pain. It was so heartwarming for him to see after only witnessing her tears and pain these last few weeks. “I am so glad you have come back to me,” she murmured, her thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. Her eyebrows lifted. “I trust you have come to an understanding with…with everything?”

He nodded. He leaned in and kissed her again, accepting her warm lips and tongue and swallowing her moans as he ran his hands over the leather of her coat, dragging her against him. He could scarcely believe why he had denied himself this pleasure, why it mattered to him at all. They were beings of love and heat and desire and who was he to deny himself that? He wanted nothing more than to drag her to the hulking throne of their ancestors, to fuck her senseless over it, but unfortunately they had other matters to attend.

“We will rule,” she said. She smiled again, nodding at his questioning look. “You and I, together…” Her fingers tangled in the hair at the base of his neck. “As Aegon and his sisters ruled and Alysanne and Jaeherys. We will have children…” She pulled his hand in between them, flattening his palm to her belly. He closed his eyes, a sob escaping him at the swell he felt through her leather. Tears swam in her eyes. “You and I, together. The last dragons. We are not the end of our House.”

It made what he had planned to do so much worse. He had to tell her. He nodded, forehead butting hers, brow wrinkled. “Tyrion wanted me to kill you. He tried to get me to turn on you, to use the madness of the Targaryens as an excuse for your actions and how you would use it against my sisters…they will not bend the knee…I thought I might do it. I was not sure, but…” He dragged her face to his, snapping, gray eyes heated, as hot at the ash that smoldered at their feet. “But I am a Targaryen too. So then I must also be mad.”

Her eyes shuttered, for a moment, as she studied him. “Were you going to kill me?”

“I do not know, truthfully.”

“And what changed your mind?” She kept his hand on her belly, on their child growing between them, and he was disgusted that he even entertained the lion’s attempts at manipulation. She cocked her head. “Or did it?”

“My sister,” he whispered. He embraced her again, kissing her, over and over. He had so much to make up for, he thought. All those stupid nights apart.

She broke away again, breathing heavily. “Your sister?”

“Aye.”

“Which one?”

He smiled, rather melancholy, thinking of the little girl whose body had once rested at the foot of the throne before them. Of the cat that had still survived all the death and chaos that took his master. “Rhaenys,” he whispered, his head resting against hers. He folded her hands in his, brought them to his heart, swaying lightly in the open destruction of the once grand hall that Maegor had built. He closed his eyes, humming to himself.

After a long while, he pulled to stare at her, at how happy she was. He was so happy she could find joy in all the pain that had occurred. The death of her sons, of her best friend, and of her most trusted protector. They would rebuild this castle in their name. Everything they would do would be for them.

She nuzzled under his chin. “And you…you are sure?”

Sure of what, he didn't know what she was asking. He guessed it was all of it. Their relation, his bloodline, the betrayals, the destruction…he closed his eyes tight. They had to stop murdering the Lannister soldiers. They could nto have their families wanting to see to their destruction, it would foment rebellion. They could not have that, not after just coming to power. He kissed her brow. “I am sure. They took everything from me, Dany. They took my life…my family…” he trailed off, shaking his head again, frowning. “They always use me. They’ve _always_ used me.”

Aemon had to go to the Wall, to avoid being used by _them._ By the people that thought it was their responsibilities to install kings and queens and who lived and killed for power and control. He would not be that person to them, to Sansa or Arya or Tyrion. He would not be used like that ever again. “You’re the only one who has only seen me,” he whispered. He stroked her lovely face, as if it were carved from marble, her hair as silver as the snow dusting the tops of her shoulders now. He smiled, shaking his head, angry at himself for denying it of late. “You are the only one who saw me and never sought to use me.”

She smiled, her eyes crinkling with the movement. Her hand covered his heart, the gentle movement reminding him that he was still alive. This was not a dream. “Those who sought to use you for their own goals will suffer the consequences.” She rested her cheek to his heart. “Starting with Tyrion Lannister.”

He nodded, staring at the Iron Throne. He smiled, as the shadow of a black tom jumped up onto it and began to lick its paw. He rested his cheek on her hair, whispering. “Fire and blood,” he murmured. He swayed with her, humming nothing as she purred against him, his tired dragon. He slipped his hand back between them, covering their baby, all the more grateful he had not fallen into the lion’s traps.

She broke away from him, taking his hand, Drogon flying down to meet them as they entered the chamber where Tyrion was being held. She passed the sentence, but it was he who swung the sword. The last lion tried to talk his way out of it again, before settling with disappointment.

“I thought you were better than this,” he said. He shook his head. “You are Ned Stark’s son.”

He frowned. “No,” he corrected. He smiled, serene, finally knowing exactly who he was after his entire life. “No I am not Ned Stark’s son. That is where you got it wrong Tyrion Lannister. I am the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, the blood of Old Valyria. Those who wrong my family, they will die screaming. They will burn.” He pulled Dany into his arms again, possessively wrapping her up against him. His voice was pure rage, the rage he had kept tethered for the last two decades of his life. “And Daenerys is my family.”

They watched him burn, before she peered up at him, squeezing his hand comfortingly. “Who is next my love?” she whispered.

He stared out vacantly at the burning city beneath them. He sighed, his heart hurting at what had to be done, but it had to be done after all. Treason and betrayal, it could not go unpunished. They had an example to set, for the future before them. The world they hoped to build. They could not allow people to think they could just declare independence and ignore their right to rule. They ruled by conquest, after all.

“Sansa Stark.”

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)
> 
> If you didn't read the books, Balerion pops up here and there throughout, and he does not have a name, but GRRM basically confirmed the angry black tom that pisses everyone off in the Red Keep is Rhaenys Targaryen's cat.


End file.
